Review: Star Trek: Discovery, "Red Directive" & "Under The Twin Moons" | Season 5, Episodes 1 & 2
Captain Michael Burnham is back, and she's brought her friends along
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of the final season of Paramount+’s Star Trek: Discovery. As always, this first review is free to all subscribers, but subsequent reviews will be exclusive to paid subscribers. Until 4/8, new yearly subscriptions are 10% off—you can read more about our upcoming Spring schedule here.
[Editor’s Note: With one-hour two-episode premieres, where it makes sense, we’ll divide the review into two clean reviews so you can read the first review before getting to the second episode.]
It’s been a while since I watched an episode of Discovery. Losing the review gig wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me; I never hated the show (despite occasional posts to the contrary), but I could never entirely get on board with the series’ choice to focus more on interpersonal drama and low-calorie “mystery box” plotlines than the usual Trek fare. Every time I sat down to write about it, I was faced with a certain dilemma: saying something “isn’t Star Trek” is bad criticism, in addition to being nonsensical. Of course it’s Star Trek. It says so right there in the damn name, and the fact that I grew up with the franchise doesn’t mean that a new series needs to live up to my expectations. We got ships, we got outer space, we got all the trimmings, and if the tone is different, if the plots are more whiz-bang adventure than anything remotely philosophical, so be it. Why not have some fun for a change?
To its credit, “Red Directive” is—if you’re willing to go along for the ride—a lot of fun. Whatever my problems with the show’s writing, the production values remain top notch; every setting is shiny and gorgeous, every action sequence is crisply edited and cool, and the score never, ever lets us forget how thrilling these people’s lives must be. There’s no real wasted time, and while the episode finds plenty of moments to check in with the main ensemble and re-establish emotional connections, the script does so efficiently, and almost always in the service of the main plot. I also don’t want to discount the creativity when it comes to the setpieces. The episode opens with Captain Michael Burnham basically surfing on the outside of a ship doing warp, and later we have two full sized ships making planetfall to block a landslide. Practicality aside, it looks pretty sweet.
If I sound like I’m hedging my bets here, well—c’mon. You’ve likely read one of my Discovery reviews in the past, but if you haven’t, that’s long been my approach with the show. I don’t love it, and at this point I likely never will, but not loving something doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what it does well. At the very least, I’m going to keep trying to assess the show as much as I can from the perspective of what I think it’s trying to accomplish. Yes, this is never going to be my kind of Star Trek show, but that doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad. There is stuff worth appreciating here, and if I’m going to be sticking around for the last season, I’m going to do my best to praise as well as dissect.
The main cast is still charming, in that Marvel movie banter kind of way. (Not derogatory, it’s just a certain style.) Putting Michael in the captain’s chair last season was the right choice, and it’s something that should’ve happened ages ago; the idea of focusing on a non-captain main character was interesting, but given how each season’s macro plot revolves around her in some way, and given how much of the writing is devoted to making sure she’s always right, at the very least putting her in charge gives her some justification for telling everyone what to do. Stamets is still annoying, but his marriage to Culber is cute, and not just for representation reasons. Adira is a charming nerd. Saru remains MVP, and having him hook up with a Vulcan ambassador is undeniably sensible and adorable.
It’s just…I wish the writers would put as much effort into the details of their storytelling as they do into the quips and setpieces. The plot of “Directive,” for all the ominous…ness (ugh) of the title, is simple enough: the Federation has discovered a thingie in an 800 year old Romulan ship, and they want it, because it’s a big deal. Why it’s a big deal doesn’t become clear until the end of the hour (and, I would argue, not even really then). For most the episode, Michael and her crew are chasing a pair of murderous treasure hunters who managed to get to the Romulan ship first. Our heroes fail to catch up with Moll and L’ak by the end, which means that all those big action sequences were for nothing. Well, not entirely nothing: they manage to save a settlement (that their actions essentially put in danger) and they get the corpse of the android designed by someone who really liked Noonien Soong.
The problem isn’t that the bad guys escape; the problem is the numbing effect of so many big action scenes smooshed together without any consequences to actually reflect their size. Michael surfing on a ship is essentially just a chance to introduce this season’s frenemy, Captain Rayner, and the chase on the planet is an opportunity for Michael to be right again, and to show off some cool special effects. Our enjoyment rests entirely on our willingness to be swept away by big moments, with the quieter moments being devoted to character beats that mostly just serve to reiterate what we already know.
The show continues to feel bafflingly small, with every crisis essentially revolving around the same half a dozen people. (I liked that Michael brings Booker back to help track Moll and L’ak and he immediately knows the exact broker they’ll be visiting to sell their pilfered goods: Fred, the aforementioned Data-like.) And boy does it suffer when you think more than five minutes about what’s going on.
So, the mysterious object is… sigh… a Romulan puzzle box. Sure. But it turns out the reason everyone is freaking out is because the puzzle box has information about the Progenitors, the mysterious alien race introduced back in the sixth season TNG episode, “The Chase.” In that episode, Picard was brought into a search for a mysterious whatsit after the death of a former mentor; he eventually finds a hologram made by the Progenitors that explains how they made sure all sentient life would be vaguely humanoid (thus ensuring the future jobs of hundreds of forehead make-up artists) before disappearing forever.
This was an okay ending for that episode (you can read my old review, which is still up on The A.V. Club, if you like–but feel free to skip the first two paragraphs. Boy was I talkative back then) but makes no sense here, at least in how David Cronenberg and the other higher-ups behave. Yes, the technology to create new life is impressive, but it’s not inherently violent that we know of, and who knows if it’s something that can be done again, or if any of the equipment used still works. This being Discovery, I’m sure there’ll be some kind of big bang waiting at the end of the hunt, but the amount of effort spent in the very first episode insisting that this is, yet again, unlike anything we’ve ever faced before…it’s exhausting. Literally untrue, and also exhausting.
That, then, is my opening salvo. I haven’t watched the season’s second episode yet, as I wanted to write this review without knowing what came next. As is, I don’t hate watching this again, and I liked all the cool bits. I just wish it didn’t make my head hurt quite so much.
Stray observations
Hey, Tilly’s still around. And she’s got a boy she’s into. Good luck to them. (I wish I could explain why I find her scenes so grating at this point, because she’s not a bad actor, and the writing is cute—I guess it’s just a milder version of the Barclay thing, where the character’s schtick so broad it becomes annoying no matter how well-performed it is.)
I feel like a “red directive” mission should only come up when there’s direct evidence lots and lots of people could die, but then, I’m not David Cronenberg.
“Under The Twin Moons”
There’s a kind of plotting I can’t stand when I notice it; I think of it as “video game plotting,” for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. (I like video games, btw.) I first remember being conscious of the idea watching Coraline, a largely delightful and creepy film that stumbles a little in the final act when it turns its climax into a fetch quest. For those unfamiliar with gaming, “fetch quest” means more or less what it sounds like: go find the thing and bring it back. In Coraline there were several things to find, each in a different location, and the artificiality of the process—no matter how rooted in fairy tale logic—was impossible for me to ignore. In this season of Discovery, like many seasons of Discovery before it, there’s only one thing to find, technically speaking, but we’re going to have to deal with a lot of fetching before we get there.
In video games, this kind of thing works okay, since it fits into what games are designed to do: give players interesting tasks to accomplish on their way to a conclusion. The better games do a better job of hiding it, but even when it’s not done well, it doesn’t necessarily ruin an experience for me. With other media it’s different, because while movies and TV are also designed to engage us and pass the time, the audience is watching the characters perform tasks, rather than performing those tasks themselves. There’s less to distract from the artificiality. It can admittedly work well in movies (plenty of my favorites have heroes trying to get a thing before baddies can get it), because there’s a limited amount of time before the goal is accomplished. On seasons of television, though, the idea of spending each week almost but not quite getting to the point? It isn’t exactly a thrill.
“Under the Twin Moons” certainly tries to keep the thrills up. It becomes obvious this episode, if it wasn’t at the end of “Red Directive,” what the focus of the show’s final season will be: tracking down the potentially mind-boggling Progenitor people-maker tech. And it also becomes obvious how the show is going to accomplish that hunt—with National Treasure-style riddles that send our heroes bopping around the galaxy. This time, they’re exploring a planet identified in the journal inside the Romulan puzzle box (Michael and the others have access to that journal through dead Fred’s memory banks). Next week, it’s off to Trill, where we’ll find the next bread crumb to follow.
So yeah, I don’t love this approach. It just feels… childish? The fact that the “red directive” is still active is bizarre, although I’m not even sure if that name means anything. I thought it indicated any sacrifice of life would be condoned if it was done in pursuit of the stated goal, but Captain Rayner gets pushed into early retirement (and then rehired by Michael) because of his decision to risk the settlement in the previous episode. His actions didn’t even cause the collapse, he’s just accused of “giving the baddies ideas.” What’s the point of having a super secret scary go-for-broke command level when you’ll be reprimanded just the same as always?
I mean, I do know the point here: it’s so Michael can make Rayner her number two, and get back to the weird “Michael arguing with a white guy” dynamic the show seems to love so much. The only real difference between this and Michael/Lorca or Michael/Pike is the power dynamics, but the result will likely be the same: Michael will do what she thinks is best while Rayner shouts at her, and then when it all works out he’ll begrudgingly show her respect.
Of course, the real point of the “red directive” is to create the illusion of stakes. While the concept of technology that can create life is intriguing (remember how well that turned out with Genesis?), it’s not something that immediately grabs you and refuses to let go. So everyone on the show has to pretend it’s of vital importance, because the show’s writers don’t have a clear sense of how to generate excitement and tension unless they’re upping the ante; and folks, at this point in the run, there’s not a lot of money left on the table. A smarter show would ease us into the idea, trust in the audience’s investment that they don’t need to turn the dials up to 11 from the start (and then scratch in higher numbers past that, just in case). As is, if every possible mission is about the end of the universe, I dunno, maybe you should just call it now? Let people rest, at least.
I’m being snarky, due in no small part to this being the second episode of Discovery I’m reviewing today. But “Moons,” while it has some neat moments, really didn’t land for me. Everything in this felt like something the show has already done several times before, and the character work doesn’t always work like it should. Michael finds out Saru has a cool nickname and teases him about it, but because of who she is, and because of the nature of their friendship, it comes off less as teasing and more as “Remember, I’m the badass, not you.” This is, ostensibly, Saru’s farewell mission, although I’d be shocked if he doesn’t come back before the end of the season; I wanted to be moved by him saying goodbye, but the best I can manage is appreciating the show at least taking some time to try and make it matter.
Tilly’s back on Discovery, despite definitely having another job. “Moons” gave me a chance to isolate why she still annoys me: it’s a small moment, but at one point, Michael says something about “losing a foot” (indicating that she and Saru have lost safe ground), and Tilly immediately thinks Michael meant one of them literally lost a foot. That isn’t something an adult would do, it’s a sitcom joke in a moment of extreme crisis; the problem with Tilly is that no matter how many times various characters assure her that she’s grown up and come into her own, that she’s brilliant and a bad ass and what have you, the writers still have her saying something silly at the worst possible time because someone thinks it’s cute.
All right, enough grumpiness. Although I’d like to add that I wrote the bit in the previous review about how small the universe of Discovery seems before discovering that Moll, the lady thief, is the daughter of Booker’s mentor and the closest thing to family he has left. (Shades of “They killed my second cousin. Big mistake” here.) There’s no reason for this. Sure, it’ll give Booker some angst as they chase the baddies down, but was that needed? And hell, why is Booker even on the ship at this point?
And on, and on. Like I said, the details make my head hurt. “Moons” isn’t a trainwreck—by and large, it’s just Discovery doing what it does, being big-hearted and goofy and not sweating the small stuff. Apologies if you enjoyed this more than I did, and fingers crossed that a few days break will make it easier for me to appreciate all those special effects.
Stray observations
Rayner says he’s been on several “red directive” missions before. Discovery has literally saved the universe multiple times, but this is the first we’re hearing of the really scary missions.
I’ll be sad if this really is Saru’s farewell, although I’m grateful they didn’t give him a “one day till retirement” death. (I suppose there’s still time.)
I'm with you, Zack. I really thought I was done with this show after season 4 just continued to give me deflating-balloon-vibes that I hopes were just going to be a season 3 thing. I guess I'm just too much of a sucker Trek completionist.
Watching these I was trying to pin down just *why* the show wasn't working for me the way it had in the past, and at some point during episode 2 it hit me: I don't really like Burnham anymore. I don't *hate* her, but she's just become an uninteresting character to me. This was definitely not the case in season 1 and 2, where I really enjoyed the "human raised by Vulcans, mutineer constantly driven to prove herself" angle the writers and SMG took. But ever since the opening of season 3 and those months of off-screen adventures with Book basically rewrote her, I haven't been interested in the same way.
I noted particularly during the action scenes that there was just a distinct lack of urgency and seriousness from Burnham throughout. I get it, she's been through a lot of shit by this point, but just compare any of the action scenes from these episodes to the season 2 opener ("Brother") with the pods in the asteroid field. *That* scene was great and I think it's because the characters were treating it seriously as the dangerous business that it was, and the guy who wasn't got promptly killed. In this pair of episodes, Burnham is just quipping and there's a palpable lack of tension.
And Discovery without an interesting Burnham, or thrilling action scenes? Not even really Discovery, is it. It's just all a bit meh.
You want to talk about this universe being small? Even setting aside the poorly-motivated Da Vinci Code nonsense they're apparently building this season around -- seriously, people who are trying to hide something generally don't create an elaborate sequence of clues pointing the way -- I can't believe that the next potential destinations were Betazed and Trill. This is like when people make fun of Star Wars for always winding up back on Tatooine!
Booker getting extra angst by needing to save the grown daughter of his former mentor or whatever is especially hilarious when you remember the writers literally blew up his entire homeworld last season. I think he has enough to depress him already! But that's Discovery for you, always needing to push everything to the max at all times. These episodes reminded me of one of my other pet peeves about the show too, all the unearned declarations from one character to another that they're the best most special person in the universe. Hearing that once or twice, after we've seen someone struggling and improving and finally narrowly saving the day? That would be fine. But the people on this ship seem to need to give each other those affirmations all the time, which means they inevitably ring hollow to the audience.
Can we talk about how weird it is to have Tilly back? She's never bothered me quite as much as I know she does other viewers, but she was written off rather abruptly last season for what I have to assume was the actress's choice, since it didn't exactly come up organically in the story. Maybe she had a temporary conflict that's now been resolved? But the show pulled a similar thing with Saru already, where it seemed like we weren't going to see him again after the season 3 finale and then they immediately brought him back in again, and overall this sort of move just feels really sloppy to me. If you ever wanted clear evidence that there's been no sort of multi-year arc planned for this series, look no further than those casting irregularities.